Watercolor backgrounds

One of the things I have been wanting to try are these cakes of paint called Twinkling H20’s, have you heard of them? These little watercolor gems have intense vibrant color and pearly iridescent shimmer all in a sweet little jar. The shimmer is so fine it’s like painting with ultra micro glitter. My hubby bought me a few of these for Christmas this year, and I’m excited to share my results with you.

In the photo’s below, I have printed Cupid Mae and Cuppa Mae out on Deluxe Crafters Cardstock and colored them with Copic Markers. (This cardstock is also really cool, and totally worth trying out.) Please note: I would only perform this background technique after your image has been colored with your markers. I wouldn’t take any chances as I’m pretty sure putting your markers over the paints would ruin your marker somehow.

1. Here are a few of the Twinks opened up. They are really hard compact cakes of paint.2. To activate the paint, spritz them with water. It’s ideal to keep a small cup of water close by to rinse your paint brushes between colors. Keep your spritzer close by too, these paints absorb the water pretty quickly, so you will continue to “water them” as you are painting. I found that the less water that there is in the paint jar, the more vibrant the color. 3. Just dip your paint brush in and start painting. 4. See the small bleed? Be wary of how much paint you are applying close to the lines of the image. This was my first go at this, and I think I had too much water on my brush in this area. A dryer brush closer to the edge of your image saves it from bleeding.

When dry, the edges on the image will probably be warped and curled a bit. I like that look, so I didn’t mind. You can layer the colors to create a mixed media type look. Experiment between layering while the colors are still wet, and waiting for a layer to dry.

1. Cupid Mae was my guinea pig and I had a feel for the watercolors by now, so I pulled out some new colors to try with Cuppa Mae. 2. I activated a few colors with water and decided to try blending these colors while they were wet. Colors shown are: Rose Gold, Teal Zircon, Orange Peel, & Mango Mamba. (Please note, I have heard that you are suppose to let your twinks dry out before putting your lids back on. They can create a vacuum while wet making the lid harder to open next time)3. I started with the yellow color and worked my way into using the orange. Remember to rinse your paintbrush before switching to a new color.4. When I moved from yellow to teal, my teal turned more greenish. Neat for blending, but I didn’t want a lot of green here. I waited for it to try, and went back in with my teal.

After the teal dried, I took a fine tip brush and edged around Mae in yellow… then I thought it would be fun to add little dots to add some texture all around the image. I had so much fun with this paint, I created my own paper and most of my embellies for my card! The sentiment is from Everyday Smiles.

Oh Leah why would you remind me of the whole case of Twinks that I have not used in a couple of years. I loved them when I was collecting and then left them alone. LOL
This is a great tutorial. Thanks for the inspiration.